CS373 Fall 2021: Mark Grubbs : Final Entry

How well do you think the course conveyed those takeaways?

The takeaways of this course are quite disconnected when examining them from where they are sourced from. The takeaways that come from the lectures, such as using the strongest containers, versus the ones that come from the projects, such as maintaining good collaboration, feel variable in their effectiveness to be relayed. Ones that were focused on and drilled in more, such as being lazy and team collaboration, were easier to remember since they were actively exhibited in the projects and the lectures.

Were there any other particular takeaways for you?

Ultimately, there has only been one thing that I should have followed more. I should have started things earlier. I have come a long way from my previous excursions of starting things the day before they were due, but starting things earlier always helps.

How did you feel about cold calling?

This semester, I do not feel as though cold calling was really cold calling. I feel like there was a lack of people being called; the same people seemed to be talking for the most part. This could just be me though. As a concept, people being cold called is a good idea for building individual students’ understanding and ensuring that people are actually in class (in this environment where people are in class online and when students go back to in-person classes to see if they are paying attention).

How did you feel about specifications grading?

I see specifications grading as a double-edged sword, with one side sharper than the other. On one hand, students increase their capability to get a good grade or a grade they want to specifically get for the class because the grading system is clearly specified by the specifications and the number of assignments the student has to pass to get a grade. However, this ability to get any grade a student wants creates the potential for students to do less work overall, increasingly bad for group projects.

How did you feel about help sessions and office hours?

Although I did not use them much, the help sessions were a good thing to have in addition to the office hours. Having more help available is helpful.

How did you feel about the support from the TAs?

The TA’s providing support through the many mediums they had available to them made them more effective in helping students. This was especially true through the Discord.

What required tool did you not know and now find very useful?

React made making a website seem like a less daunting task. I had no experience in making websites, so this was helpful.

What’s the most helpful Web dev tool that your group used that was not required?

TypeScript was helpful in not having to deal with JavaScript not having typing that could cause runtime errors.

How did you feel about your group having to self-teach many, many technologies?

Having to learn many technologies on our own felt more realistic than other CS projects since there are many evolutions that occur in coding projects. Although we may have gained a shoddy understanding of the technologies used, looking through the potential technologies we had available to us let us see how it feels to implement programs with current technology.

Give me your suggestions for improving the course, but apologies in advance; specifications grading will remain.

Specifications grading could be separated into different phases over the course of the semester, so that students will have to be attentive to class all throughout the semester.